Yay-sayers, who can be found at all levels of an organization, actively seek and promote positive change in the workplace, explains Kim Pilkington
Teams, workplaces, and communities that thrive and are resilient work well together in both good and difficult times. They persevere and survive the tough times. Leading emergency management and communication practices can be applied to any workplace to improve performance and job satisfaction.
It’s time to ‘CTRL-ALT-DELETE’ or ‘Command+Option+Esc’ our old mental frameworks and habits that aren’t serving us well at work, especially in how we communicate. It’s time to practice and encourage respectful, honest, informed, and timely dialogue throughout the organization. It’s time to give more space and voice to solution-focused Yay-sayers and less to the Naysayers.
Many things influence quality communication at work. Employees at all levels are often stretched; time, tools, and resources are inadequate; workplace stress is often a category five.
Imposter syndrome, burnout, change fatigue, and soul-sucking commutes affect performance. The negative impact on employee communication, wellness, and workplace culture can become debilitating if not managed individually and collectively.
Conversely, corporate fairy-tale branding campaigns and toxic positivity are not the kind of communications that will help employees thrive and succeed. What we need is a more realistic approach. A realistic approach to communication validates the experiences of many in the workforce, making them feel understood and acknowledged. Frameworks influence our attitudes, behaviours, and experiences at work. We spend a lot of our lives working; we need to make work more satisfying by listening more and improving how we communicate with each other.
Who are Yay-sayers?
Yay-sayers, who can be found at all levels of an organization, actively seek and promote positive change in the workplace. They are the C-suite executives, Executive Assistants, managers, and front-line staff who are committed to creating a better, more effective, and sustainable workplace.
How do Yay-sayers communicate?
Yay-sayers are truth-seekers and truth-tellers who are respectful and sensitive to others. They are practical, realistic, and committed to bridging the gap to a better, more effective, sustainable future. Yay-sayers communicate intentionally, plan, act, take risks, learn from their mistakes, and adjust. Their approach to communication is one of action and learning, focusing on finding solutions and driving positive change.
Yay-sayers use their voice, experience, resources, influence, and networks to find solutions and advance constructive change in the workplace.
Yay-sayers ask others what it would take to improve the organization, assess the costs and rewards, seek support, and actively contribute to implementing changes.
Yay-sayers engage with naysayers to understand their concerns and experience and to seek viable solutions.
Truths
The best executive administrators share many skills and competencies with the best emergency managers. Bonnie Low-Kramen highlights the following skills and qualities in her best-selling book Be the Ultimate Assistant, including:
- Respectful
- Ability to think on your feet and react quickly and calmly
- Creative problem-solver / resourceful
- Even-tempered
- Great organizational skills
- Responsible and take initiative
- Professional and self-motivated
- Positive attitude
Lessons from emergency management
Clear communication quality, frequency, and timeliness are the key differences between effectively managing an emergency and lacking enough control. The input and timely engagement of many actors inform good communication. Emergency management experts speak of grey skies when a disaster strikes. Blue skies refer to times before and after a disaster that rarely get media attention, including prevention, mitigation, preparedness, and recovery. When disasters happen, people and communities struggle to survive and recover. Timely and informed communication is essential for better decisions, actions, and outcomes for everybody in the community and workplace.
In emergency management, an established hierarchy operates with defined roles, responsibilities, accountabilities, processes, and structure. Leaders are expected to engage others and be decisive and clear communicators. In all phases of emergency management, the expectation is to communicate in a way that will contribute to quick and effective decision-making in a high-stakes environment with imperfect information.
By actively listening, clarifying, asking pertinent questions, and offering options, Yay-sayers contribute to the planning and execution of prevention, mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery activities. The stakes are too high not to contribute your experience, knowledge, and intelligence in your assigned role and team. The best emergency management leaders are Yay-sayers, as are those managing and supporting an emergency operation. Yay-sayers are vital to creating and sustaining healthy, high-performing, sustainable workplaces in every sector.
Where do Yay-sayers thrive?
Trust, honesty, accountability, performance, and teamwork are platinum currencies in the workplace and emergency management. In the C-suite, a vital asset of an Executive Assistant is the expansive network of professional relationships you nurture daily. You know who to call to get what is needed done. Undoubtedly, your professional proximity to the C-suite means career-savvy people are expeditious in responding to your calls. The trust and reliability account balance increases during blue skies, enabling others to share critical information before being asked or made aware of it during grey skies. Performance and professional relationships elevate from gold to titanium when truthful intelligence is proactively shared to prevent, mitigate, prepare, respond to, and recover from a crisis.
Indicators of a Yay-sayer-friendly workplace
“If you get wind of a decision that is about to be made that you know is not a good one, or if you see a red flag, please speak to your leaders even if they don’t ask. Leaders don’t know what they don’t know. If you have something important to contribute, do it anyway.” ~ Bonnie Low-Kramen
Employees and leaders are responsible for their workplace culture. People who role model and normalize a Yay-sayer culture listen deeply first, encourage various viewpoints, are curious, seek clarity, ask questions, and explore alternatives. Silence doesn’t mean all is well. Too often, those who know what is really happening and see ways to avoid a full-blown crisis do not speak up out of fear or belief that leaders won’t or can’t change. Things can go bad fast when employees don’t anticipate, prevent, mitigate, prepare, and communicate issues and probable consequences.
Fortunately, there is an alternative culture worth leading and supporting. Executive Assistants and emergency managers share many of the same highly valued competencies, skills, and aptitudes, making it look easy! Indicators of a Yay-sayer-friendly workplace include common questions used to spark dialogue during conversations, team meetings, scrums, performance reviews, and retreats.
- What’s another perspective from a different vantage point we haven’t discussed fully?
- Who have and haven’t we engaged so far?
- What are the assumptions and biases that support that conclusion?
- What do you see? What’s missing? What else? What if …
- What successes did I/you/we contribute to today? This week? This quarter?
- What mistakes did I/you/we contribute to today? This week? This quarter?
- What did I/you/we learn that we would possibly do differently if we had a do-over?
- What concerns or excites you about this idea?
- What do you need from me to help you? Team?
A warning
Not all workplaces have the long-term vision to model, support, and demand a culture predicated on truthful, constructive, and challenging communication. If employees advance by supporting the status quo and middle managers sweep alarming issues under the carpet, Yay-sayers will not thrive. It is up to us to determine which workplaces deserve the skills, competencies, and potential we offer.
6 Tips to Optimize Your Inner Yay-sayer
- Commit to developing your Yay-sayer communication skills. If you believe your workplace would benefit from better communication between yourself and others, it takes courage and a plan. It starts with you.
- Reflect on how you and your friends communicate with each other. We listen, clarify, question, and explore alternatives because we care enough to do so. What elements of these can you practice at work?
- Reflect on communication with workplace coaches, mentors, and trusted colleagues. What elements could you expand to other colleagues?
- Pay attention to respected and credible people in your workplace who behave and communicate successfully. Consider inviting them to share a cuppa to discuss how you value their communication skills. Share a concrete example. Chances are they are aware of their abilities and would be willing to share some tips.
- Make a case with your manager to invest in optimizing your communication skills, including benefits to them. That may mean taking courses, workshops, or simply meeting with colleagues.
- Set a weekly goal to advance your communication development and include observations, trends, activity, progress, and setbacks in a log or tracker.
We need your unique perspective, sight lines, and ideas. Share them generously as we continue to learn and succeed in planning for the worst, hoping for the best, and expecting something in between.
